1. Technical Field
The present disclosure generally relates to door systems and apparatuses, and more particularly, to door apparatuses with a space efficient range of motion, for example, relating to aircraft ingress/egress and/or carriage ingress/egress such as passenger elevators and/or object carriages.
2. Description of the Related Art
Designers increasingly aim for resilient, efficient, lightweight, and easy to operate dynamic or movable structures, such as doors. This is particularly the case in aircraft applications having strict strength, operations, size, shape and weight requirements.
Aircraft doors include primary structure doors, for example passenger entry/exit and cargo doors, and secondary structure doors, for example interior furnishing doors. Primary structure doors typically form a fuselage portion, retaining pressure during flight.
Multipurpose aircraft and growing aircraft loading and unloading demands can benefit from light ingress/egress assemblies, easy to operate with sufficient structural qualities and capabilities. Conventional door designs are generally heavy and difficult to operate with space-consuming range of motion, unsuited for installation in some fuselage locations.
A common door design includes hinged doors pivoting away from the fuselage to open. These doors require excess space in order to swing between open and closed positions. In addition, operating these doors is typically cumbersome, often requiring multiple steps and operations to switch between open and closed positions. Some doors require turning a lever with a minimum threshold force to unseal the door, followed by one or more inward, outward and/or lateral movements before pivoting or moving to the open position.
These door installations are limited to locations with sufficient space to accommodate their operation. Furthermore, they tend to be slow and difficult to operate. Their range of motion limits or prevents manual operation because these doors are heavy, making them difficult to manually operate in fuselage locations where gravity acts on the door, such as fuselage lower lobe.
Other doors exhibit lesser pivoting motion with respect to the fuselage. These designs, however, typically have complicated and heavy mechanisms, with actuating components coupling the door to the fuselage at more than one side of the door. Furthermore, operating these doors requires multiple operations similar to the hinged doors discussed above.
Furthermore, operators, particularly heads of state, private, and VIP aircraft operators can benefit from loading and unloading accessories that reduce or eliminate dependence on external loading and unloading devices, and terminals, particularly due to growing security concerns and privacy preferences of such parties. However, proposed integrated passenger elevator solutions have generally not materialized due to, among other things, lacking space-efficient and lightweight fuselage and elevator carriage doors.